Needs A Remake

Rating: 7/10 (20 June 2009)

I saw this movie at the cinema when I was a kid, and on the big screen is seemed to just blow everyone away. We got to see the war from what at least looked like every angle, with a cast that included just about everybody who was anybody. It was long, sumptuous, involved and sometimes confusing. But it was also epic and definitive. Or so things seemed back then.
But I got the DVD cheap last week, not having seen it for a while, and gave it a watch. Now; I have to admit that I've joined the nay-sayers. I've awarded it 7 stars because it does still provide a decent run for your money, and one should take the movie's vintage into account. However; it no longer appears to be the epic I once thought.
Today, editing comes over as rather fragmented. A lot of little vignettes of ordinary servicemen don't really move the story along. I'm thinking of the guy who makes a fortune at dice and then believes his winnings might betoken bad luck. We know such things may happen, yet its detailed inclusion was irrelevant especially at the expense of true events. There's a guy telling a boring personal tale to someone he has never met, or there are the needlessly vociferous arguments with the Luftwaffe pilots, and so on. Pluskat's dog had the good sense to scram before the shooting started (in times of war follow your pet's instincts!). The big issues needed to be addressed before we spent time with all this minutiae. Yet the cut and cut again from one senior military figure to another presumed an almost encyclopedic knowledge on the part of the viewer. Often these people were seen just once or twice, and again it contributed to a fragmentary appearance.
It's obvious that a lot of money, thought and effort went into this movie's making, but watching it today, some production values have an almost made-for-TV appearance. That may be a measure of how production values as a whole have risen over the years. The thunder-flash grenades and fire-cracker ordnance explosions especially on the beach just don't measure up nowadays. 'Saving Private Ryan' has raised the bar too high. We also saw no sign of the 'funnies' - ingeniously adapted tanks - that were such a boon to the British assault, but which were scorned by the American high-command with dreadful consequences. The amazing 'Mulberry Docks' also deserved at least a look-in, even though they didn't actually arrive in France on the first day. They were an essential part of the preparation. Some mention was also deserving of the elaborate effort to conceal the military build-up. All of this was part of the British effort, and shamefully omitted.
I think a remake, employing far greater use of special effects with good-quality CGI, and a much more coherent (and honest) overview is called for. The first half at least should be dedicated to the tremendous preparations - rather like 'The Dam Busters'. Though whether or not such a stellar cast could ever again be assembled to play the leads seems highly unlikely. Worse still, an update will be made by a Hollywood that is even more Anglophobic than that of the 1960's and would probably be shown from an exclusively American stand-point. It could even include a scene in which Yanks present us with the 'Enigma' machine which they captured for us in 'U571'. Ahem.
I still regard 'Dunkirk' as the superior movie. And not because that was an all-British (or perhaps Anglo-French) success/debacle.